


Quiet

by ItinerantAvthor



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Academy Era, Developing Friendships, Eating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fatherly relationship - Freeform, Food, General flashbacks of Tarsus IV, Getting Together, Healing, M/M, Running Away, Some emotional intensity, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23369077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItinerantAvthor/pseuds/ItinerantAvthor
Summary: Jim escaped from Tarsus IV, sure. But when he struggles back home, Pike tries to convince Bones and Spock to give him a helping hand.
Relationships: James T. Kirk & Christopher Pike, James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy, James T. Kirk/Spock, Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock
Comments: 20
Kudos: 244





	Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! The coronavirus got ya girl here working on WIPs I totally forgot about. I hope that you enjoy this one, I put a lot of effort into it. If you think of other tags that I forgot, please let me know and I'll fix them. Please let me know what you thought :) Love y'all!

Quiet.

Jim never heard so much quiet.

He had been on Tarsus IV for four years and had actually enjoyed his time there - his uncle and aunt and cousins were wonderful people, if a little old-fashioned, and the friends he made at school were friendly and didn’t tease him about his parentage. 

But slowly and slowly and slowly it seemed to him that everything got more quiet.

Kids didn’t shout on the playground anymore. The hum of hovercars on the highway lessened week after week, as if people stopped going to the Capital anymore. Cows even stopped their lowing and huffing.

In fact, it hadn’t happened slowly. The quiet had fallen rather quickly. Jim’s aunt and uncle felt the first pangs of famine, loathe to let their children or their nephew suffer unnecessarily. But then -

Jim stared out at the plain of withered grasses before him. It was so quiet with no one else around.

At first he thought he was the only survivor of the massacre. Of the guns. Of the stomping, tramping boots. He remained as quiet as possible, slithering on his belly away from the charred house, the empty and smoking barn. Silent tears fell from his eyes. He reprimanded himself.

_Quiet. Quiet._

But there were others. Katie, a friend from school, and her younger sibling who was half Orion. Ben, from the synagogue. An older boy from school, Feren, who was deaf and blind, who Jim had met once at the beginning of the school year. 

They were so careful. So quiet. They only whispered and slept and kept watch. Jim was the only one who went out for food. And that was his mistake.

Because the guns came back for them. The stomping, tramping boots didn’t ever give up looking for them, the survivors, the witnesses.

And Jim found them.

Their bodies were so serene. He almost didn’t realize they were dead. Katie’s lips were parted and her hands tucked under her head. Her sibling rested near her belly, nestled into her body heat. Ben and Feren slumped together with their heads on each other’s shoulders, looking for all the world like they simply rested their eyes for a moment before the fire.

But there was blood. And the smell of phaser fire. And Katie’s eyes were open. 

As he ran from their hiding spot he forced his breaths into silence and wiped angrily at his face. 

_Quiet._ Must be quiet.

So when the quiet was disturbed by Federation starships that came to Tarsus months and months later, when Jim heard the shouts of Starfleet officers looking for survivors, he found the tallest tree and hid in it so quietly. He was almost successful until one man looked straight up at him, as if he could hear Jim breathing.

And that’s how he was found - sitting paralyzed in a tree, a quiet bird with clipped wings and no song.

Christopher Pike was kind and gentle with him. He climbed the tree, too, and coaxed Jim to come down to the ground. He was the one who broke the news that Kodos was dead, that Tarsus was free, that Jim could go home.

Home? 

On the ground Jim tried to run, but Pike grabbed him by the collar and very firmly told him that he was safe, that he needed to stay put. Jim wasn’t convinced. He saw the guns. He heard the tramping, stamping boots. He wanted to scream. But he stayed quiet.

That night he tried to run again, but Captain Pike was stationed outside his tent and watched him crawl out - so, so quiet - with sad eyes.

“Jim,” he said, apologetic and sorrowful in a way he had no right to be.

When he sobbed into Pike’s chest by the campfire Jim stayed as silent as possible, willing his choked throat to smother the sounds that tried to escape with his tears.

The Starship was loud, too loud by far, and Jim stayed quiet and hidden in his quarters as much as he could. There were too many people. Too many echoes of voices. Jim had forgotten that many people even existed in the universe.

In San Francisco Pike tried to search for Frank, for Winona, tried to reconnect Jim with his family. But there was no one to be found. Where did they go? Jim was asked. He shrugged. He didn’t know why they ran off into the night like he had tried to do only weeks ago. He didn’t understand why they would quietly disappear. Maybe they thought he was dead. Maybe he was dead.

Jim slept on Captain Pike’s couch for three nights. Well, he told Pike that he slept. Mostly he just lay on the cushions, watching the shadows on the wall farthest from him, cocking his ears for any strange sounds. Pike knew, of course; he took extra precautions and had officers stationed outside the apartment to catch Jim if he ran, calculated how likely it was for the boy to get out of the apartment and fade into the neon twilight of San Francisco alleys. 

But Jim stayed. And Pike adopted him.

Not fully. Not legally. But he had guardianship over Jim. 

“You’re 17,” Pike said as they left the courthouse. “That means you’re on the verge of aging out of the system, so to speak. But you can always count on me, Jim. I want to help you.”

And Jim could almost believe it.

As the headmaster of Starfleet Academy - San Francisco (Jim learned there were several other Starfleet Academies across Earth and even a few colonies), Christopher Pike was able to get Jim Kirk early admission to the freshman class of 2465. And it was early - at least a year younger than his classmates, Kirk’s skinny frame and slouched figure stood out among the red-suited freshmen in halls of hundreds learning basic xenobiology and phrenology and advanced calculus. But his scores spoke for themselves. Jim was smart. That’s all there was to it. Even Tarsus couldn’t kill the genius in Jim Kirk.

Still. He was quiet.

It never bothered him before, when students were quiet, studious types. Pike enjoyed the rowdiness of a university campus, of course, but the ones who took their courses seriously were always his favorites. But Jim - Jim was too serious. He was… too quiet.

He’d never done anything like this before, but he grimaced into his coffee and sat behind his desk and told himself that he was doing what was best for Jim when the alarm at his door beeped once.

“Enter,” he called, and watched the two cadets he’d called upon walk into his office and stand at attention.

He waved his hand. “At ease,” he said with a sigh. The cadets barely moved.

Eyeing them closely, Pike wondered what the hell he was thinking. The first cadet was a Human, brown-eyed and a little older, a man with a medical degree under his belt and a whole world of weariness on his shoulders. The second was a Vulcan, severe in every aspect of his appearance, holding himself as if he might break were he to relax.  
“Gentlemen,” he said, setting his mug down and trying not to break it in his fist. “I have an assignment for you.”

When he was done outlining his plan and providing a terse reason behind it, the Human cadet gripped the back of the chair he stood behind and blew out a disbelieving breath. 

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” he asked, the Southern accent - Louisiana, maybe? Or Alabama? - in his voice too thick to be ignored.'

Pike waved his hand again.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” The cadet demanded.

“Leonard,” the Vulcan warned, but the Human simply stared Pike down. 

“This is crazy. This is authoritarian,” he snarled.

The Vulcan cadet shifted where he stood and interrupted his Human counterpart. “Captain Pike,” he said, measuring his words carefully, “what I believe Cadet McCoy is saying is that your plan appears to take autonomy away from your own son.”

Pike sighed. “He’s not my son,” he said. 

“Jim Kirk is just a kid, Sir,” Cadet McCoy said through grit teeth. “He needs therapy and time, not two classmates to follow him around like a bloodhound sniffin’ out a half-dead deer.”

Ah. Georgia, then. The last State in North America to allow game hunting.

“Look, Cadet,” Pike said, straightening in his chair. “If you think what I’m asking is unreasonable, you can leave. Either of you,” he said, shooting a glance at the Vulcan. “But let me be clear - I’m offering to pay the next two years of your schooling, and potentially provide each of you a shot at being stationed on the Enterprise after graduation.”

“Bribery,” McCoy muttered under his breath, but Pike chose to ignore it. 

“What I’m asking in return is that you keep an eye on Jim - sure, it’ll require you report back to me if he’s having a… a tough go of it. But it’s for his protection. I can’t always be with him, and stars know he wouldn’t want me to always be there. If you object so strenuously to my asking you to essentially be friends with my charge, then…” here Pike paused. He wasn’t exactly sure where that threat was headed.

Cadet McCoy looked defeated. The Vulcan stood rigid as ever by his side. 

“Well, I can’t exactly pass up an offer to not have to do night shifts every weekend just to get my ass through school,” the doctor groused. 

Pike pressed his lips together and looked over to the other cadet. 

“Mr. Spock?” he prodded. 

“I agree with Cadet McCoy’s assessment of the situation,” the Vulcan said after a momentary pause. “This is a morally gray area in regards to the young man in your care. However, I also understand that Humans require close relationships in order to heal from traumatic events.”

Captain Pike sucked his teeth. “Are you both saying yes?” he asked, watching them carefully.

McCoy scowled, so Spock answered for them.

“Yes,” he said, his features schooled into perfect placidity.

Pike had them start the very next day. He rearranged their schedules so they passed by Jim in the halls on a daily basis. All three now had Practical Survival Techniques together. Jim got to move on-campus to a small dorm shared by McCoy and abutted by a single suite occupied by Spock.

If either cadet were concerned that their target would suspect their sudden involvement in his life, they soon found their anxieties alleviate and their befuddlement skyrocket. It wasn’t that Jim wasn’t smart. In fact, he outscored McCoy on a Basic Emergency First Aid test in their Survival course. He was just… quiet. He didn’t seem to notice the sudden influx of McCoy’s or Spock’s involvement in his life.

As for Jim, most days found him hazy and dissociative. He passed his classes - aced them, really - but attention to his surroundings waxed and waned with little to no warning. He hid himself away most days to escape from the constant chatter and the laughter and the yelling. 

Finals came around, and with no word from either the doctor or the Vulcan, Pike sent off a quick message reminding the cadets that their job was not done. Whether out of exasperation or out of sincerity, Spock did not know, but McCoy wrangled him and Jim out of the dormitories shortly after they received Pike’s warning to the closest bar.  
With most cadets gone for the winter break between semesters, the bar McCoy chose seemed empty and sad as compared to its previous state. Jim had only been there once before and had panicked before Spock could order him a drink, but it seemed alright now. 

There were a few men in the corner playing pool, grumbling and guffawing under their breath. An old person in suspenders and a jaunty cap sat at the bar, playing solitaire by themselves and humming under their breath. The bartender, a woman with bright pink hair and wrinkles wreathing her mouth and eyes, motioned for the three of them to take any table. Jim sat with his back to the wall, facing both the bathrooms and the entrance. 

They ordered and their drinks arrived, but they mostly just sat and watched the group play pool. Jim’s eyes glazed over at some point. He wasn’t here anymore, so to speak, Spock thought. He had shuttered himself away, seeking some quiet that couldn’t be found outside.

“Jim,” McCoy barked suddenly, trying to jerk Jim out of his haze. The younger cadet simply swiveled his head slowly to look at him. 

“Jim, you’re so damn quiet,” the Human said, exchanging glances with Spock. “What’cha got goin’ on in that noggin?”

Kirk blinked. He slurped his soda. “Nothing,” he mumbled.

“I have found that Humans very rarely achieve the status of thinking about nothing, even in the depths of meditation,” Spock declared, sipping the whiskey McCoy had ordered for him. 

“You gotta lighten up, kid,” McCoy insisted. “I mean, hell, we’ve been roommates almost the whole semester ‘n I hardly know anything about you, ‘cept you might be the most minimalist person I’ve ever met.”

Shrugging, Jim stared down at his soda. 

“I mean, d’you like reading? Any books you like in particular? Got a girl somewhere? Or a guy?”

“Leonard,” Spock warned under his breath. 

Jim blinked and furrowed his brow. “Why?”

“Why?” McCoy repeated.

“Why do you want to know?” Jim demanded, finally looking him in the eye. Finally, Spock thought, he was coming back to the surface - out of the past and into the present moment. 

“‘Swhat friends do,” the cadet said, leaning back in his chair. “They know shit about each other.”

“You first,” Jim said.

Spock and McCoy exchanged glances.

“I am from the planet Vulcan, of a city called Shi’kar,” Spock began. “It is the capital city. My father is an Ambassador to Earth.”

Jim seemed to study him for a good half-minute, bright blue eyes taking in his glittering brown ones. He didn’t say a word, but Spock felt his breath catch in his throat anyway.

“‘N I’m from a little town in Georgia. Betcha never heard of it,” McCoy said. 

If he was falsifying his enjoyment of this moment, Spock thought, watching the cadet lean back and take a long drink of his beer, he was doing a fantastic job of acting.

Jim just raised an eyebrow.

“Gibson, Georgia,” the doctor said. “A little slice of heaven on Earth.”

“I don’t believe in heaven,” Jim said flatly. 

Spock tilted his head. McCoy’s grin faltered.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

He took another long pull of his beer and made a face at Spock, silently pleading with him to come up with further questions. Mind racing with possibilities, Spock sat frozen in his chair.

“So what classes d’you like best, Jimmy?” McCoy asked after a minute of silence had fallen over the group. He glared at Spock, who pointedly turned his attention to Jim.

“Don’t call me that,” the boy said. 

“Jimmy?”

“No.”

McCoy scratched his chin. “You know, most people got nicknames for their friends.”

Jim glared at the doctor. “I don’t want a nickname.”

“I call Spock a goblin sometimes. It’s somethin’ friends do.”

Spock and Jim exchanged glances. 

“It is not a nickname, per say, but rather a Human tradition of what I believe is called ‘teasing,’” Spock corrected.

“It’s a nickname,” McCoy said firmly. 

“Do you have a nickname, Leonard?” Spock asked. 

It was hard to say exactly why, but Spock noticed for the first time how Jim’s eyes sparkled. It was almost as if, instead of smiling, or before he could let a smile escape, he smothered it, but the sparkle in his eye wasn’t able to hide. He filed that away for future contemplation.

“Well, nobody ain’t called me Leonard for years, that’s for sure,” the doctor drawled. 

Spock refrained from pointing out that he called Leonard “Leonard.”

“Old Sawbones,” Jim muttered under his breath, almost to himself. “Old man McCoy.”

McCoy’s cheeks flushed red as he choked on his beer. Spock ducked his head, surprised that a laugh almost escaped.

“What’s that?” McCoy coughed.

“Trying out nicknames,” Jim said. 

Spock cleared his throat. “It seems fitting,” he began, avoiding Leonard’s glare, “that your nickname come from old Human slang.”

“Bones,” Jim said, testing it out on his tongue. 

McCoy made a face. 

“Fascinating,” Spock murmured. He glanced over at Jim to see his eyes sparkle once more.

They spent the rest of the night at the bar, and McCoy eventually settled in to his new name. He got pleasantly tipsy and told outlandish stories that made Spock blink in honest disbelief and Jim snort in good old-fashioned laughter. 

Their message back to Captain Pike that night was simple. Small. Spock did not enter in his log that Jim’s eyes brightened like the Kloss Nebula when he actually smiled, or that he had tiny freckles lodged under his eyes and across his nose like his mother. He did not tell Pike that he thought Jim was the most beautiful human he’d ever seen. He did say that Jim was quiet, quiet and small, and perhaps he and McCoy would take him on a hike tomorrow.

In fact, they did not go on a hike the next day. A thunderstorm rolled in across the Bay. The three of them ended up playing board games in Bones’ and Jim’s dorm room, starting with old Earth games and ending when McCoy grew annoyed with the calculating moves his opponents made. The two of them decided to play chess on Jim’s bed while Bones cooked a meal.

Pike opened his messages the next day, clearing his throat and sipping coffee as he sat at his overly large desk. He read the missives from his two compatriots and smiled for the first time in months.

The next semester brought more frequent reports to Pike’s computer. He was pleased with the regular updates on Jim’s social life - he had a little group of friends, it seemed, made up of students from various fields. Nyota Uhura had a sharp tongue and a good head on her shoulders; that Chekhov kid seemed a bit young, but he was bright; Hikaru Sulu would be a damn good pilot someday; Montgomery Scotty already had “Chief Engineer” plastered outside his dorm room, which Pike knew about thanks to some very heated reports; and Christine Chapel, a nurse who was a bit older than all of them and quite irascible, per McCoy’s reports. 

That night he took Jim out for dinner. 

“Wanted to check in on you, son,” he said, twirling Angalian fettuccine on his fork. “See how you’re doing in school.”

Jim shrugged and continued shoving food into his mouth. Pike watched him for a few moments. 

“Anything you wanna talk about?” he asked.

“No,” Jim said, puzzled. A spot of garlic aioli sat untouched on his cheek. 

“Nothing?” Pike pressed, handing him a napkin. “How are your friends?” 

Jim bit the inside of his lips. “Good,” he said. He started to stir the rest of the food on his plate - not that much, to be honest - and hunched his shoulders even more.

Later that night Pike sent a message to the two cadets. 

_Does Jim eat around you? Do his friends ever tease him about how much or what he eats? Does he relax around them? What do they say to him? Do you think he needs to be in therapy more often?_

He deleted the questions and instead wrote: 

“Keep up the good work.”

And he wasn’t stupid. He read between the lines of each cadet’s reports. He knew the brotherly fondness McCoy felt for Jim and the romantic undertones of Spock’s words. Pike wasn’t a Captain for nothing.

Evening after evening, the three cadets crammed into Bones’ and Jim’s room, alternating between studying and watching movies, or studying and making dinner, or studying and playing chess. More often than not their friends wove in and out; Uhura and Scotty sitting on Bones’ desk and quizzing the doctor about Starfleet protocol during a ship-wide blackout; Chapel and Chekhov and Sulu stressing over their Botany II class report one moment and crying from laughter from a terrible pun Jim made the next. 

It was good. 

Pike watched him gain weight that summer. Saw how he straightened his shoulders and looked people in the eye, how he threw his head back and laughed. 

He watched him put a hand on Spock’s shoulder, brush against him when they walked together, lean into him to speak softly. 

Spock sent reports in week after week. He told Captain Pike about Jim hanging out with their group of friends and calculated the exact number of times he laughed, what he talked about, and how often he ate. He reported on the quiet evenings they spent together with McCoy, the amount of drinks he had, how much he talked, when he went to bed.   
Spock did not report on the soft looks they exchanged on clear, starry nights when they sat on the rooftop together. He did not tell the Captain about their first kiss curled up on the sofa in the middle of a study break, or their second kiss as they stood in the kitchen waiting for their tea to steep. He didn’t talk about the time they lay in Jim’s bed, just holding each other, as Jim cried into Spock’s chest and whispered confessions of Tarsus in short, broken sentences. 

And then.

The end of the world happened.

It was as summer faded into fall in San Francisco. Cadets were all coming back to campus, slowly, dragging their heels as they warmed their faces in the bright sun. The city seemed more alive than ever. School would start soon, tourists were desperate to enjoy the last few days of freedom, and several diplomatic coalitions had agreed to meet outside San Francisco to quietly hammer out details of a tenuous peace treaty. 

In the middle of the afternoon, a week before classes began again, Jim was alone in the campus library. He needed the quiet, needed to be away from his friends, from the noise.  
He felt it in his chest before he realized what was happening. A shaking, a tempo distinguishable only on a cellular level. 

Jim ran toward the study hall, but he heard creaking and groaning and he knew it was a bad idea but he looked over his shoulder and -

When he woke up, Jim felt like a million bricks had been dropped on his head. He felt like he did right after he found Katie and the others. His stomach was twisted in knots, completely barren, but his mind still wanted to empty it. 

A voice in the hallway pulled him out of his thoughts. It sounded familiar but upset. Jim sat up. Still he couldn’t quite make it out. 

Pulling light covers off his legs, Jim stood and made his way to the door. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but there was a bad feeling in his chest. He paused, finally able to hear.

“You want to know what I think?” the first voice said, sounding tight and angry. “I think you abandoned your post. I think you didn’t hold up your end of the bargain.”

A second voice interrupted with a guffaw. “How were we supposed to know that quake was gonna be as bad as it was?” it said. “You ain’t gonna be able to pin that on us.”

“Also, per our agreement,” a third voice chimed in, “neither Cadet McCoy or myself were required to be near Jim Kirk’s side at all times. You only stipulated that we were to be his friends, not his bodyguards.”

“Maybe I should be clearer,” the first voice hissed. “Since you obviously aren’t up to doing what I hired you for, you can consider your positions terminated. Do you hear me?”

“You don’t wanna pay us to be Jim’s friends anymore? Fine by me. But you can’t keep us away from him,” the second voice snapped.

But at this point Jim had completely lost focus. He knew those voices - Chris Pike, Bones, Spock. They were talking about him. Jim. And it sounded like - well, it sounded like Pike had contracted his two best friends to be his two best friends. 

He exhaled a shaky breath, reaching for the nearest wall faintly to hold himself upright.

“Jim?” 

There were hands, then, holding him up and walking him back to bed. He struggled against them, weak and impotent, but still they fell away in surprise.

“What did you do?” he rasped, looking furiously at Chris.

Puzzled, the Captain only stared at Jim. 

“Did you - did you pay them?” Jim demanded, looking from McCoy to Spock. “To be - to be -”

Spock reached for him, murmuring something in Vulcan, but Jim snatched his hand away, glaring. 

“I don’t know what you think you heard, son,” Chris started, his face slowly draining of blood, but McCoy cut him off.

“Give him a little credit, Captain,” he said, nearly spitting the title.

“You - you - ” Jim tried to make the words out but it was so hard to think; his brain was overcrowded; he needed some quiet - 

Pike placed his hands on Jim’s shoulders. “Jim, I can explain,” he said.

“Get off,” Jim said, pushing Pike away. “Get out, get out, get out.”

“Jim, ashaya,” Spock said, not touching him but getting in close. “Hear me, please.”

He looked up through wet lashes. Spock had never seen such unfathomable loathing before in the eyes of another person.

“Fuck you,” Jim whispered.

They left. It was quiet.

Jim put his face in his hands and cried.

Only hours later he found a transport out of town. Out the window lay piles of rubble, bands of rescuers of all species working together to find the lost ones. Jim leaned back in his seat, new clothes on his back and a pack at his feet with some necessities.

When they came back the next day, apologies on their lips and tears in their eyes, the three conspirators found only an empty room and an ignorant nurse.

“He checked himself out,” they said. “He’s 17. He can do that.”

“He’s just a kid,” Pike choked out, but McCoy walked him back to the waiting room. 

“We’ll find him,” he assured the Captain. “We’ll find him.”

His face a stoic mask, Spock asked where he was most likely to have gone.

“Where? Hell if I know,” Pike said. “When I found him on Tarsus it - it was his only home.”

Spock and McCoy exchanged glances. “Where did he live before that?” McCoy questioned, delicately avoiding the horrific name.

Pike stared at his hands. “I just wanted to do what was best for him,” he said softly.

They walked him back to his office at the Academy, one of the few buildings on campus with very little damage from the quake. By the time they sat him down at his desk, Pike’s head had cleared and he was determined to go after his charge.

“Iowa,” he determined after a few moments at his computer. “Outside Cedar Falls. A little family farm. Don’t know if it’s still standing, but I’d guess it’s where he’d most likely go.”

“Can’t have gotten too far,” McCoy mused. 

After pulling some strings, Pike was able to commandeer a Fleet transporter shuttle. Buckling into a cargo seat, McCoy muttered misgivings to himself. Spock sat stoically in the co-pilot’s seat.   
In the air, Pike turned to the Vulcan cadet, hesitated, then:

“I’m sorry. I know you and Jim -”

Cheeks flushing verdant green, Spock pointedly kept his gaze from meeting the Captain’s. “It is of no consequence,” he said stiffly.

“Still I’m - I’m sorry.”

They didn’t speak for the rest of the flight, except to give McCoy half-hour updates of their flight path.

The ship yard in Cedar Falls was dilapidated, empty, ramshackle. Only four Starfleet officers worked there, taking shifts of two months at a time to maintain ten vehicles for official use. The transporter shuttle landing in their patch of dirt was most likely the biggest to-do they had seen in years, McCoy thought as they piled into a small hovercar. 

“The coordinates of the Kirk farm, sir,” Spock said, mechanical and robot-like as ever.

“D’ya ever think maybe we shouldn’t have come after him?” McCoy asked as they started off, twenty five minutes from their destination.

Spock’s hands, sitting listlessly on his knees, tightened into fists. 

“I would not leave him,” he said tightly.

“We hurt ‘im, Spock,” McCoy said, leaning forward from the backseat. “Bad.”

The Vulcan did not turn around. “I have learned that when a wrong has been done, it must be righted quickly and efficiently.”

“Spock,” McCoy said, hesitatingly, “this might not be something we can come back from.”

“You assume I have not thought through all possible outcomes, Leonard,” the Vulcan said coldly. “I have done so, and find your assessment has a twenty-five-point-six-six chance of occurring. It is twelve times more likely than any other scenario.”

Silent, McCoy simply sat back and watched out the window as they drove further into farmland. 

Rows of corn passed rows of corn passed rows of corn. Stalks ten feet high waved over their hovercar ominously. The gray-green sky above seemed to bear down on them. Pike gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles popped and the skin turned ashy white. A raindrop splattered on the windshield.

At the end of a dirt road they found a rundown farmhouse, completely wood and stone and abandoned. It listed to the left like a grandfather leaning on a cane. About two hundred feet from the house was a corral with whole sections of fencing missing, and next to it a centuries-old barn that was close to collapsing. Rust-colored paint peeled off in chunks. Roof tiles flapped in the wind.  
Pike stepped out of the vehicle.

“Wait here,” the Captain commanded. 

“Sir, perhaps -” Spock said, reaching for the door handle.

Pike locked the doors and glared inside. “Stay. That’s an order, Cadet,” he said.

The sky had turned an even darker gray. Droplets of rain pelted the ground, kicking up little puffs of dirt.

He called out Jim’s name. Once. Twice. His voice caught in his throat. He felt pulled back to Tarsus, searching for survivors, finding Jim in a tree, feral and afraid. Pike had been afraid too, that day; he wanted to cry and hide from the bodies, the ruin, the pain etched into every corner of the colony. 

But like today, he hadn’t given up looking for someone. Anyone. 

Jim.

“I’m here,” a tired, quiet voice came from the farmhouse’s gaping front door.

Pike ran toward him, sliding on his knees to where Jim sat, limp and shivering on the dust-covered floor. He pressed Jim into a bear hug, felt his heart burst with worry and anger and an apology that wouldn’t sound as sincere as he meant it even if he said it a hundred different ways.

Jim sat stiffly, tolerating the affection. 

“You scared me so much, young man,” Chris choked. He closed his eyes and kissed the top of Jim’s head. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”

Jim shrugged.

“I’m so sorry,” Pike said, “Jim, I’m - I’m so sorry. I was trying to do what I thought was best for you. You know that, right? I love you and I thought I was doing a good thing for you, getting McCoy and Spock to - to help you. You were just so quiet, I thought you needed some friends.”

“You bought them.” Jim’s words felt heavy, lead dripping from his lips.

“I - yes, technically, I did,” Pike admitted, swallowing his pride and smoothing Jim’s hair back from his forehead. Raindrops fell steadily outside. 

“You don’t trust me,” Jim accused, looking straight into Pike’s eyes. 

Heart breaking, Chris squeezed Jim’s hands. “Jim,” he said, staring right back. “I trust you. I do. I just wanted to help you.” He hesitated, then stood, offering a hand to the still-crouched boy. “Come on, let’s get to the car and we can talk more on the way back home.”

Jim scowled. “‘Mnot going back,” he mumbled. Rain now fell in sheets just a few steps away.

“Jim,” Pike scoffed lightly, “what are you gonna do? Stay here? In this old place?”

“It’s my mom’s house,” Jim said defensively. 

His face softened. “It’s your mom’s house,” he agreed, “but it’s no place for you to live. Where’s a bed? How about heat when it’s cold or air cooling when it’s hot? What about food?”

Jim turned his face away. “I lived without that stuff before,” he sniffed.

Pike struggled to keep tears from choking up his voice. “I know,” he said, sounding more gruff than he liked. He cleared his throat. “I know,” he repeated, clearer this time. “But you shouldn’t have to, Jim. Come home. Please.”

The house quietly groaned in the background. Rain fell all the harder. Jim shifted on the floor but didn’t stand.

“I can’t - I can’t go back,” he croaked. He lifted his eyes briefly to meet Pike’s but dropped them only a moment later. “I can’t.”

“Why?” Pike asked softly. He remained standing with his hand outstretched.

Jim sniffled. Chris barely heard it over the rain.

“Said you trusted me,” he said, “‘n you want me to come back, but.” Jim’s breaths came in pants now, in and out faster and faster as he got worked up. “But I don’t trust you. How ‘m I supposed to know if someone’s really my friend or if you just hired them to like me?”

“Oh, Jim,” Pike murmured, but the boy wasn’t finished.

“‘N you got me into the Academy but I wouldn’a got in just on my own. I even wanted to be a Captain ‘cause of you. Starfleet Captain Jim Kirk. Fuck.”

“Language,” Chris said out of reflex, then grimaced. 

“Jim, I did pay McCoy and Spock to shadow you, that much is true,” he said, steeling himself against the glare Jim sent his way. “I wanted them to be your friends to keep an eye on you. But I didn’t pay them to like you. I can’t make anyone like anyone else. They liked you all on their own.”

Cheeks flushing, Jim stuffed his hands on his jacket pockets. “I’m supposed to trust that?” he spat. 

“And you got into the Academy all on your own,” Chris continued. “Your test scores were incredible. Your experience with survival, with mechanical systems, it’s out of this world. I couldn’t force the Academy to give you a spot even if I wanted to. Turns out you’re just that good, kid.” 

Jim glowered at the ground and traced his finger through the dust. Captain Pike closed his eyes and spoke softly.

“I know I betrayed your trust. We betrayed your trust.” He chose his next words carefully. “You don’t have a reason to trust us anymore. But if you did, I’d ask you to please trust that we love you. Trust that we wanted to do what was best for you; trust that I made a foolish decision. Trust that when you come back we’ll work through this at your pace and no faster. Trust -” he paused, then said: “Trust that someday you’ll be the best and brightest Captain there’s ever been on a Starship.”

He held his breath. Waited. It sounded like the rain was petering out behind him.

“D’you bring them?” Jim asked, his voice tiny and quiet, still on the dusty floor.

“Yes,” Pike admitted. “They wanted to apologize, too.”

Jim’s chin quivered but his voice was firm. “I don’t wanna talk to them,” he said. 

Chris took Jim’s hand and gently helped him stand. 

“You don’t have to,” he promised. 

The Captain and the runaway walked back to the car. Pike kept a hand on Jim’s arm, lightly, just in case he decided to take off. 

Heart racing, Jim almost did break away. Every cell in his body screamed to run, to head for the barn, the fields, anywhere so he wouldn’t have to confront the two concerned faces staring out at him from the car. 

“Easy,” Pike murmured. They got closer to the vehicle. Jim gulped and tensed.

When Spock opened the door and stepped out, eyes fixated on him, Pike kept a firm grip on Jim’s shoulder and steered him toward the seat the Vulcan cadet had vacated. Jim took it without glancing at Spock. 

A moment later Pike was behind the steering wheel. McCoy and Spock were in the backseat. Jim sat huddled in the passenger seat, sweatshirt hood up to shut the world out. And they drove back to the shipyard.

The drive and the flight back to San Francisco was quiet. It reminded Jim of Tarsus in a way that he hadn’t thought of in months; the tense silence stretched out before him, taut and waiting for something, anything to break its steady facade. No one spoke. No one made eye contact. It was quiet.

Pike dropped Spock and McCoy off at the dormitory and took Jim home to the apartment. Jim collapsed into bed and shut himself away from the rest of the world while Chris frantically caught up with the reports and emergencies and belligerent questions that built up while he was gone.

The next few days were quiet. Pike would have called it ‘calm’ had there not been an undercurrent of tension whenever he and Jim were in the same room. 

Classes started up again; they held as many as they could in the undamaged buildings, cramming students and faculty alike in the vaulted auditoriums. Jim caught glimpses of McCoy and Spock, but in the chaos of the semester beginning and the disaster relief, he didn’t get a chance to say hello.

Not that he wanted to. He could only hope he might be able to avoid both of them for the rest of his life.

Jim was on his way back to Pike’s apartment after an intense 10-hour day working with Gaila on their advanced biomechanical engineering and quantum physics project. It was halfway through the semester, and Iowa seemed a million years away. 

“Jim!”

He heard his name and swiveled his head this way and that, confused. Who knew him around here? Unless -

McCoy was making his way over, brown hair stuffed angrily under a tight red cap. Jim began to walk away briskly.

“Jim! Wait!”

Cut off from his exit by a group of chattering freshmen, Jim made a frustrated grunt in his throat as Bones caught up. He reached out as if to touch Jim’s arm, but aborted the attempt at the last moment.

“Haven’t seen ya in awhile, kid,” Bones said, eyes seeking out Jim’s roving gaze. “It’s been… Lord, it’s been almost two months, huh?”

Jim made a noncommittal noise.

“Alright, look, I’ll cut the shit,” the doctor said, following Jim as he began speedwalking away. “I know you prob’ly don’t want to talk to me since all that stuff went down -”

“All that stuff,” Jim scoffed under his breath, but Bones kept going.

“ - I just wanted to say… me ‘n Spock’ve missed you. A lot.”

Jim stopped walking abruptly, causing Bones to collide into him with a breathy _oof._

“Just fuck off already,” Jim said. He meant it to sound angry, meant to convey his rage and frustration, but instead he just sounded tired and quiet. “Haven’t you guys done enough? Christ.”

“Jim.” Bones’ voice was soft. He reached out and tentatively touched his arm.

Flinching, Jim pulled away. He held his arm as if protecting it from McCoy.

“You gotta know Jim, we may’a started out being all friendly-like to you because Captain Pike was payin’ us,” Bones said. He stepped back to give Jim some space. “But we stayed because you’re a great kid. A great friend,” he amended.

Looking off to the left, Jim scowled, still holding his arm close to his body.

“Friend, right,” he said. “That’s definitely what Spock was going for.”

Bones’ face looked pained. He rubbed his forehead, nudging the red cadet cap. 

“Jim,” he started, then changed his mind and closed his mouth so quickly his jaw snapped. “I can’t - I can’t tell you what Spock thinks,” he said ruefully. “I think you should go talk to ‘im. He misses you, too.”

“‘F he misses me so much, why doesn’t he say it to my face?” Jim challenged.

The doctor sighed. “Okay, I’m gonna say something and you’re gonna get mad. But I mean it in the nicest possible way, okay?” 

Suspicious, Jim nodded.

“Spock’s runnin’ away. Just like you, Jim. Withdrawin’ from everyone and everything because he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. ‘Cause he fucked up. ‘N you - ” Bones grunted, putting his hands on his hips as he got worked up. “You don’t even see how fuckin’ similar y’all are! Or how much that boy loves you.”

Jim felt his throat tighten and tears well in his eyes. He looked away and scuffled his shoe against the ground. He begged himself to stay quiet until he could get away from Bones; part of him knew he could break at any moment.

McCoy’s eyes softened as he looked at Jim.

“Look, I dunno what happened when you - ya know, before. But I do know that you’re real hurt on the inside, Jim. I should’a said this earlier: I’m sorry. For everything. We shouldn’ta taken Pike up on his offer. We should’a told you sooner.”

Jim turned his head and pretended to be busy with a loose thread in his uniform jacket. He made a grunt in his throat and nodded once.

“Right.” Bones sighed once, then again. “I guess I’ll see ya around if you want, Jim. Just maybe remember my advice.”

Jim stood there as Bones walked away, watching in his peripheral vision as the doctor’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He sniffed and made his way to the apartment. 

As he worked on his essay and the content Gaila had divided up between them, Jim’s thoughts drifted back to his meeting with Bones in the courtyard. He kept glancing at his communicator, as if a text from Spock would magically show up. Jim scowled and turned it face over.

He ate with the Captain, who was torn between some bureaucratic bullshit and looking concernedly at Jim every other minute, and drifted back to his room. In fact, he was settled at his desk with an old-fashioned book in hand when he realized he’d lost four hours. Sitting, holding the book, staring at the wall. He sighed. Tossed the book on the bed. Flopped on the bed after it. Rolled over and glared at the ceiling.

When he turned his head to check the time, Jim was frustrated to find that only a minute had passed.

The evening air was cool. The sun was well below the horizon at this point, and stars peeked through listless clouds scuttling across an inky sky. Jim shivered in his thin sweatshirt and peered up at his bedroom window. Hadn’t he just been up there? He barely remembered getting down to the street.

“‘M not going to Spock’s,” he declared, shoving his hands in his pants pockets and walking very determinedly away from campus. 

But he was hardly surprised when, after wandering for approximately an hour, he found himself outside Brushwick Dormitory, the furthest school-appointed housing from the Academy. Jim stared at the ground, kicked a pebble near his shoe. He was practically shaking out of his skin - not from the cold, but from the pure adrenaline that flowed through his body at the thought of seeing Spock again.

What would he say? What could he say? 

Jim remembered an afternoon on Tarsus, before everything happened, when his uncle taught him how to properly brush and groom a horse. 

“Everything worthwhile takes time and a helluvalotta effort,” his uncle had chuckled as Jim frowned at the coarse brush. 

Before his mind could distract itself over the fact that Jim had thought that ‘helluvalotta’ was an actual unit of measurement for quite awhile after that, he steeled himself and walked into the dorm. 

The halls were - they were quiet. Still. The lighting was soothing and calm, but Jim started at every shadow. On the fourth floor, the last room at the end of the hall, away from all the others and their parties and their arguments, Jim stood in front of a door. The door. Spock’s door. And behind him, a little to the left? McCoy’s room where Jim had once lived.

Ghosts in his brain shrieked that there was still time to run, that he could walk away and no one would ever know that he had been here, but Jim grit his teeth and placed his hand on the unassuming beige pad next to the door, requesting access to Spock’s inner sanctum.

_Ping._

He knew his identity would come up when Spock saw that someone was requesting to enter his rooms. He didn’t know if that would make Spock open up or shut down.

Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Jim hesitated. Spock slept three hours a night, tops, quoting Vulcan physiological superiority over Human frailty. Usually that was between one and four AM. Jim squeezed his eyes shut against the memory of a cool hand threading through his hair at various points at night, calming him against a rushing nightmare and soothing him back to sleep.

“Jim.”

His eyes shot open and he stared at the Vulcan before him. He hadn’t even heard the door open.

“Yeah,” he said, voice breaking awkwardly as he pushed his hands in his pants pockets even further.

They watched each other for a moment.

“Would you… care to enter my quarters?” Spock asked politely.

Jim’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I…” he grasped for the words, but nothing came out.

Spock shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He wore simple black robes. They rustled around his ankles and wrists.

“It is rather late,” he commented. “Can I assist you in any way?”

“I hate you,” Jim blurted just as Spock finished his sentence.

They stared at each other.

“I see,” Spock said slowly. He began to back into his doorway, but Jim’s hand shot out and caught him.

He shook his head frantically and said, “No, no - you don’t get it, Spock, I -” He cleared his throat against the pleading tone trapping his voice in his throat. Slowly loosened his grip on the Vulcan’s robes, letting them drift back to Spock’s side.

“Would you care to come in, Jim?” Spock asked again, softly. Jim met his molten brown gaze and nodded jerkily. 

The next morning, Chris stood outside Jim’s door and announced he would be gone for a quick meeting until around noon. He waited for an answer. Nothing. He called Jim’s communicator and heard it beeping frantically from his desk. 

Guiltily, Pike bypassed the code to Jim’s door and stood in the empty room. The bed was messy, but that didn’t mean anything - Jim never made his bed anyway. Homework PADDS were on his relatively clean desk, and a paper book had been knocked to the floor.

He briefly panicked, wondering why Jim would have slipped out during the night and run away again. The Captain ran a hand through his silvery hair and blew out a breath.

“Computer, send a text message to Commander Howel that I need to reschedule our meeting,” he said to the communicator in his hand through clenched teeth.

“Message sent,” the communicator purred.

“Computer, call Cadet Leonard McCoy,” he commanded, walking stiffly to the yawning living room window that looked out over San Francisco bay.

“Calling Cadet Leonard McCoy,” the communicator said.

Moments later, he heard the tell-tale grunt of a newly woken cadet, followed by “Captain?”

“Bones, do you know where the hell Jim is?” Pike demanded without preamble.

There was rustling and a loud _thump_ on the other end before Bones said, “What?” in a much more lucid tone.

“Did you find him recently? Talk to him? Did you say something that set him off?” Pike asked, firing off his questions, pacing anxiously.

“I -” the doctor took a deep breath and started again. “I saw him yesterday, yeah.”

“What did you say?”

“Just that I missed him, y’know. And…” His sentence ended in a mumble.

Pike squinted, as if it would make his hearing sharper. “What was that?”

Bones sighed, exasperated. “I just told ‘im that me’n Spock’ve both missed him. That’s all, cross my heart.”

“Shit.” Chris massaged the bridge of his nose and held back a litany of questions and insults he’d like to throw Bones’ way.

“Look, I’ll head over to Spock’s quarters,” Bones offered. “I’ll see if maybe he went over to try’n talk to him.”

The Captain bit down on his tongue to keep himself from yelling _and what if he just ran away again._

“I’ll check the security footage,” he said instead. “Call me when you talk to Spock.”

The doctor signed off, pulled a shirt on, and ran to Spock’s door before it registered in his mind that he could have really hurt his best friend by talking to him yesterday.

“Shit,” he whispered to himself as he requested entrance to Spock’s room.

Silence. Not even a calm “Hello, Leonard, one moment while I make tea” from the bastard.

Bones pressed more firmly on the pad, hearing a faint pinging inside that warned of someone asking to come in. He pressed again, then hit the pad, swearing up a storm his mother would be ashamed of.

“Spock!” he yelled, banging his fist on the door. At the end of the hall a few cadets walked to the lift, glaring at the bizarre cadet using barbaric methods to get a friend’s attention.

“Fucker,” he whispered to himself as he crouched in front of the door pad. Jim was a whiz when it came to mechanical engineering, as Bones found out when he hacked his way back inside their apartment when they locked themselves out one night. 

A quiet whoosh was all that indicated his success. Bones stood and ran into the apartment, about to yell Spock’s name to get his attention, but he froze before he could speak.

On a small couch in his cramped living area, Spock sprawled, relaxed, eyes closed and breaths deep and even. Jim’s head lay on his shoulder, his body nestled up close to the Vulcan’s, just as asleep as the other. 

When they awoke hours later, they found an angry note telling them to contact Captain Pike right away. Bones’ cologne could still be faintly detected as Spock made them tea and Jim used his communicator. 

He entered the kitchen ruefully as Spock poured a large mug of tea for him. 

“Was the Captain upset?” he asked, eyeing Jim.

He shrugged. “Yeah, pretty upset,” he said, clasping the mug with both hands and shivering at its warmth. “But also relieved I hadn’t run away again, I think.”

A pained look crossed the Vulcan’s face before he schooled it back into stoicism. He closed the gap between himself and Jim slowly, watching him for signs of hesitation. Gently he nudged his forehead against Jim’s. 

“I am glad you are here, Jim,” he said quietly, eyes fluttering closed. 

“Me too,” Jim said. He allowed himself to relax into the quiet and knew that he was home.

**Author's Note:**

> Ashaya = beloved in Vulcan.
> 
> Also I'm bad at endings, please don't hate me.


End file.
